Although the concept of work being something you do rather than a place isn’t new, the events of 2020 made this more of a reality than ever before. The pandemic was the catalyst that enforced people to try new ways of working but the availability of robust networks, cloud computing and unified communications meant that many were surprised by how productive they could be outside of the traditional office. Inevitably there were challenges to overcome but in the significant majority of situations communication was able to happen and work continued.
The baseline of this was voice communications. When the network is too congested for video or other distractions in the home such as children, pets and other family members working, voice proved it is still the default communications method. However, traditional telephony became more of a challenge as workers moved away from their office deskphone and calls were diverted to mobiles or softphones on their PCs.
These tools made it easy to locate and contact colleagues, but audio quality suffered as workers shouted at PC’s in-built microphones and strained to hear over puny integrated speakers. Rapidly, employees and employers grabbed what they could from online suppliers to add external microphones or headsets to enable better sound quality and privacy. However, this almost random approach was a sticking plaster rather than a cure, what’s needed now is a company-wide, professionalised approach to equipping workers.
Judith Hogan
High quality speakerphones and headsets that include features such as noise cancellation and are provided by employers enable a standard set of capabilities to provide to workers and help ensure the company presents itself well over UC technology, both internally and to customers and partners. The era of solutions that were just good enough to get through the unexpected early phases of the pandemic is ending and being replaced by solutions for the longer term.
“At Poly, we’ve had an agile working policy for over a decade and that has enabled us to lead the market, developing beautifully engineered products, but COVID-19 is an unprecedented change,” says Judith Hogan, Director of Sales Acceleration at Poly.
“Hybrid working is now here to stay and has been stress tested globally. The just good enough environment which people scrambled to piece together with some fairly poor audio is ending.”
Hogan explains that poor audio means not only do workers miss key information, but they also suffer from audio fatigue as they strain to hear and participate in calls. “High quality headsets mean you don’t need to move location to find that quiet spot to close an important million-dollar deal,” she adds.
Poly expects workers to return to offices as the pandemic subsides, but few will return full-time, preferring to work from home for at least some of the time. In fact, analyst firm Gartner predicts that, by 2024, in-person meetings will account for just 25% of enterprise meetings, a drop from 60% prior to the pandemic.
This will see different approaches to work and has driven Poly’s strategy to launch new products specifically to address the needs of homeworkers for better audio both while working from home and for when they come into offices.
The Poly Sync family a new line of smart, USB and Bluetooth speakerphones, offer flexibility, while its intelligent microphones can easily detect voices throughout the room. The family includes three new speakerphones in three different sizes, for the home office, small huddle spaces and bigger meeting rooms that easily connect to your Siri or Google voice assistant and with their intelligent microphones that track the talker, not the noise deliver crisp audio quality for both work and entertainment crisp audio quality for both work and entertainment.
Next to the popular Bluetooth Voyager series and the USB BlackWire headsets, all featuring ANC capacities, the Savi 7300 Office Series’, is the latest addition to the Savi family, features Poly’s Acoustic Fence microphone technology so workers will always be heard, but never overheard.
from UC Today https://ift.tt/3uQpMdO
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